December 30, 2012

Rapidly growing numbers of Americans are suffering vision loss due to diabetes, which experts cite as one more side-effect of the obesity epidemic. A Johns Hopkins study comparing eye disease rates in two three-year periods (1999-2002 and 2005-2008) found that the proportion of Americans with uncorrectable vision worse than 20/40 had soared by 21 percent in just a few years, increasing the number of victims of such vision failure by almost 700,000. Among long-term diabetics, the rate of vision loss doubled in that time. Most disturbing was that a disease generally associated with old age saw its biggest rate increase among those aged 20 to 39, for whom it should be a rarity. Given that national diabetes rates have doubled since 1990, eye failure rates are expected to also climb.